Update June 1: More negative news—refugee charged with ripping off resettlement contractor and a whole lot more, here.
Kentucky isn’t the largest of the refugee resettlement states but falls within the top 20 for the number of refugees it receives. In a recent 5 year period—2006-2011—Kentucky resettled 7,883 refugees making it the 17th largest resettlement state, of course nowhere near the top two: California (46,218) and Texas (34,069) for the same time period.
Kentucky (well, not the state itself, but the non-profits) resettled 1,368 refugees in 2011 which moved them to 16th place for that year. We know this from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Annual Report to Congress for 2011. The ORR is two years behind in supplying Congress with legally required reports for 2012 and 2013 which of course makes it hard for Congress (they don’t seem to care) and for you to see what is going on in your state.
In 2012, Kentucky got 1,452 refugees. Go here to see where they came from.
Kentucky is a Wilson-Fish state. We told you about that here in a FAQ on W-F.
As a Wilson-Fish state, the federal government (the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHS) has chosen, in this case, Catholic Charities to administer the program for the state.
That means that state resources are being used to care for refugees, to educate the kids, to provide housing and healthcare, etc. with NO OVERSIGHT or no control from elected officials in Kentucky!
Catholic Charities is the Kentucky Office for Refugees. According to a recent Form 990 (2011, most recent available at Guidestar) the ‘Kentucky’ office received $13.1 million in revenue that year and $11.3 million came from you, the taxpayer, in the form of Government grants. About 86% of their funding comes from taxpayer dollars.
To learn more than you ever wanted to know about Kentucky’s program go here (Kentucky Wilson-Fish Policy and Procedures Manual).
But, Catholic Charities isn’t alone in bringing refugees to Kentucky, according to the ‘Manual,’ five of nine major refugee contractors operate in Kentucky. They like to call themselves “Voluntary Agencies,” VOLAGs for short. They are anything but! Most of them receive as much as 90+ % of their funding from government sources, they are paid by the head to resettle refugees and thus have no incentive to slow the flow to cities and towns they have deemed “preferred.”
In Kentucky right now the “preferred resettlement sites” are Louisville, Lexington and Owensboro. Bowling Green used to be “preferred” but has had too many problems with refugee overload, crime and even terrorism so the feds have likely stopped highlighting it as a fabulous place to send refugees at the moment (other than family reunification cases that is).
The nine contractors that monopolize the program, along with their hundreds of subcontractors, have America carved up and turf wars are not uncommon!
But, I had to laugh when I saw the list of contractors operating in Kentucky, heck! five of the nine are there and I bet competing and squabbling among themselves. The five helping supply Kentucky industries with cheap labor (chicken plants perhaps?) are: Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (helping build Kentucky’s Muslim population?), the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (they all bring Muslims, not just HIAS!).
Before we get too far into the weeds of this thing, let me tell you about some news involving Kentucky’s claim to fame in the refugee resettlement world.
This is so ironic! Our first mention of Kentucky here at RRW was in 2007 when then Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey (Bush appointment) went to Louisville and said we need to bring refugees to America to keep them from becoming terrorists! I think you know where this is going!
Then in 2008, we had the hot news from Bowling Green that a Bosnian refugee teen was shot in the head by a homeowner who was awakened by the kid breaking in. Thankfully, the homeowner was not prosecuted having every right to protect himself and his property.
In 2009 we learned from a reader who actually went to meet with the Burmese refugees of Bowling Green in their slum apartments about the deplorable conditions in which the International Center there (a subcontractor of USCRI) had placed scores of Burmese families. We wrote many posts on the controversy at the time and those can be found by going to our Bowling Green archive. See also ‘Friends of Refugees’ on the International Center’s mismanagement of refugees there.
The most stunning refugee news to hit Kentucky and the Nation in 2011 was the arrest of two Iraqi refugees on terrorism charges. They have since been found guilty and are in prison. Think about it, US taxpayers paid an enormous sum to bring them here and now we get to care for them for life behind bars. We wrote extensively on the news as it developed, click here to see all of our mentions of the KY Iraqi refugee terrorists.
So what do you think Ellen Sauerbrey would say now when it appears we did bring Iraqi refugees to America and they still wanted to be terrorists!
Senator Rand Paul
Initially we were surprised and grateful that Senator Rand Paul took an interest in the refugee program that had brought those Iraqis to his home town of Bowling Green. The Senator spoke up several times demanding to know why we were bringing Iraqis and other refugees to America. Here (in June of last year) he was roundly criticized for saying (correctly!): ‘we bring’em in and sign them up for welfare.‘
In the nearly seven years we have written about refugees, he is one of only a handful of Senators or Members of Congress to question the program, but unfortunately we haven’t seen much from him on the subject lately. Gee, I wonder why?
Congolese human trafficker?
And, as we run out of steam on Kentucky, we can’t forget the news last month about accusations that a Congolese refugee could be charged in a human-trafficking case. Sifa Ndusha’s alleged victim has filed a lawsuit claiming that she was trafficked by Ndusaha. This is happening in Lexington (a preferred community!). Read all about it here.
A recommendation to readers in Kentucky and every other state:
If you are troubled by what you see with this federal program, a program we obviously believe has gone completely off track by becoming a money-making scheme for the religious right on the backs of US taxpayers when we have our own poor people in need of “services” and is bringing large numbers of culturally incompatible people to targeted cities, please take the initiative and find out what is going on in your city or in your state.
And, by he way, when you begin following the activities of your local resettlement contractors, they aren’t just using your money for the “refugees,” they also use it for “advocacy” for political issues locally and nationally. They are all advocating for the Obama amnesty plan. So do your sleuthing and then…..
….. PUBLISH YOUR FINDINGS so that others may learn from you because the mainstream media is either too lazy or in the tank for the program. Take some lessons from the political Left and begin agitating your elected officials starting on the city and state level to do something about it. Some aspects of this program are, we suspect, being administered illegally, so be sure to let your local elected officials know that and perhaps you will find a few of them with some guts willing to fight to protect Americans first. You might even get really lucky and find some pro bono lawyer willing to take them on.
Don’t let the contractors trap you in their humanitarian do-gooder mumbo jumbo pitch either—remember this is a business they are in and the only difference is that their product is moving immigrants around and finding them “services” with money from you! They are also busy turning red states blue.
Let your representatives in Washington know too what you have learned, but don’t hold your breath that your solution rests in DC. We have visited Congressional aids there who tell us they are too scared to take this one on. Why? Fear of being called racists? Fear of the lobbying power of entities like the Catholic and Lutheran Churches? Fear of the loss of campaign donations from big corporations looking for cheap legal labor? Maybe all three?